This blog contains information on building a custom search for websites using the famous Apache Solr platform.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Installing Apache Solr on Windows with Tomcat

1) JDK

Install java development kit preferably version 1.6 or greater.

2)Tomcat

As a complete web dev environment for windows i recommend using XAMPP. It comes with built in Tomcat servlet, so you won't have to waste your time installing tomcat. Well regarding version of tomcat, i have successfully tested solr on tomcat 5,6 and 7.
Tomcat can be managed from xampp control panel or you can install it as a windows service so that it can be run independently from xampp. Well doesn't matter much whether it is xampp service or a windows service. To install it as a windows service run the 'service' batch file in c:\xampp\tomcat\bin .
After installation to check if tomcat is running open you browser and ping localhost:8080

3) Solr install

Download the latest solr release which is currently solr 3.6. Download the tarball from here and extract it to say downloads\apache-solr-3.6.0

a) Preparing solr home directory

Make a new directory in C:\ and name it solr.

Copy dist and contrib directories from downloads\apache-solr-3.6.0 i.e. downloads\apache-solr-3.6.0\dist and downloads\apache-solr-3.6.0\contrib to C:\solr\dist and C:\solr\contrib

Make a directory named solr inside C:\solr and copy
downloads\apache-solr-3.6.0\example directory contents to it. Now C:\solr\solr is what is called solr home.

b) Configuring tomcat to detect solr

Copy
downloads\apache-solr-3.6.0\dist\apache-solr-3.6.0.war file to C:\xampp\tomcat\webapps directory and rename it to solr. If tomcat service is on you will find that a solr directory is automatically created. If tomcat is off don't bother it would be created next time tomcat starts.

2. Now run C:\xampp\tomcat\bin\tomcat7w.exe (7 is for the version), select java tab and in java options pane write -Dsolr.solr.home=C:\solr\solr . Click OK and configuration is done. Restart tomcat.

c) Test solr

In your browser enter localhost:8080/solr/admin and you will see.

That's it. Solr is installed and now it can be used to do fast searching on huge amount of data from any source be it a sql database or a file. But to do that a lot of work still needs to be done related to request handlers and schemas. In the future posts i will be talking about the internals of solr.

Note : If you get errors like no cores were created or unable to load class java.* error, that simply means that you made mistake in either providing solr home path correctly in tomcat7w.exe or you forgot to copy dist and contrib folders to c:\solr.

31 comments:

i followed the instructions. I can to the solr home page but when I click admin I get the "missing core name in path" i did copy the dis and contrib files to my solr home file and still get the same error.

All of this worked fine until the last step (latest version of all programs, on Win8-64. There I get:collection1: java.io.IOException:java.io.IOException: Can't find resource 'solrconfig.xml' in classpath or 'solr\collection1\conf/', cwd=C:\xamppAnd I double-checked solr the home path in tomcat7w.exe and DID the dist and contrib folders to c:\solr. Any other ideas?

When trying to invoke the Apache Tomcat 7 properties dialog(by clicking 'C:\xampp\tomcat\bin\tomcat7w.exe '), I get the message

'Service does not exist as an installed service. Unable to open tomcat7w'. Am running it as administrator. Am able to start it fine through the XAMPP control panel though, but there doesn't seem to be a way to invoke the dialog from the control panel. Am using XAMPP portable version.

Thanks Steven! I've been trying like mad to get the solr admin page through tomcat and struggled the whole of yesterday....until i read your suggestion. Thanks again. Your solution worked for me....:-)

Where does it show loading and do you see any errors ?Please attach a screenshot of the browser window when you query and also solr log files which are named 'catalina' and placed in Tomcat installation directory. Without those it is impossible to find out what is wrong.

anyone got any ideas on how to get tika 1.3 integrated with solr 3.6.2 and drupal7 using the Apache Solr Attachments module to work? I have been running into problems getting this to work for a couple of weeks now.

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